


Surfing in Coast

by urbanMystic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2628452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urbanMystic/pseuds/urbanMystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was to the chagrin of Mom Lalonde that her children, of all the ridiculous fancies to take to, chose surfing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surfing in Coast

The small port town of Coast was perhaps the most depressing place one could ever think to live. For months upon end, fishermen were the only sign of life, leaving before the weak sunlight could brighten the gray of perpetual clouds. They came back to early dinner sna early bedtimes and children who had constantly tired fathers. For three months of the year, the clouds would lift and the tourists would pour in. Most folk got along by thinking that time was celebratory, but there were a few who saw the sham of a parade for what it was: bread and circuses.

Two of these children were the Lalonde siblings. Not confident enough to belong to the Addams Family, fumbling too often with their facades to be Stepfords, and too obsessive regarding their personal interests to be just another part of the neighborhood. Miss Jericho from down the street predicted the two would wind up hermits. Mrs Bradford predicted they'd wind up face down in a ditch in the city. Ms. Lalonde wasn't worried. She had, after all, trained them thoroughly.

The kids had grown up knowing how to cast a salt circle when the moon was new and the dead were restless. They learned to ask permission before entering a house, in the occupants weren't corporeal. Rose and Dave had grown up playing with all manner of dial covered sensors and raders tuned to black box radiation. Rose was given permission to get a tattoo at 15 under the condition that the first tattoo be a protection charm, and Dave kept a sachet of rosemary and garlic in his pocket always.

Mom Lalonde could be a tad overprotective. All the other mothers thought a simple pentacle charm would suffice. But then, the other mother's didn't have daughters who slipped into broodfester tongues during their fever dreams or sons who kept the carcasses of psycopomps about him as though he were their custodian. No, their childredn simply got into shouting matches with the ghosts of grandmothers who had forgotten to cross over and were still cleaning their homes and making dinners.

It was to the chagrin of Mom Lalonde that her children, of all the ridiculous fancies to take to, chose surfing.

It was the full moon of the Spring Tide when Dave looked out into the sea of souls. The shoreline roared with the screams of dead, painfully intermingling and seperating as the waves rolled their watery essence in and out. Dave was stoic, holding his surfboard and comtemplating the incoming storm. Rose caught up, her short-sleeve wetsuit a stark contrast to Dave's ballsy speedo.

"Do you think the tube will happen today?"

"It's totally gonna go down, sis. Down like a lesbian who just moved in with her lady."

"As a lesbian who just moved in with her lady, I can't help but notice the reference."

"I though you were bi," Dave looked over, screaming over the cold wind, his glasses held to his face by some neoprene chotsky.

"My sexuality is as precarious as the ocean of honored dead which we surf upon and shall one day join."

"Just don't say halberscam aagain. If I hear that name one more time I'm gonna vomit."

"We gaze upon the afterlife, hearing the screams of our future selves, and my philosophy is what turns your stomach?"

"Man that sea of screaming asshole happens everyday. Everyone has to deal with it. Your halberd-stem obsession is like my own goddamn personal cross to bear. In fact, I'm feeling like an old-school existentianlist right now. All mired in my own perpetual loneliness and whatever."

"If you mention Niestche I will do an epic fucking pierorette of the tightrope."

"Shut up and surf, uber-nerd."

Shut up and surf they did, with expert precision. The storm rolled in, the waves got higher, and still they rode. Dave got sand made out of toenails in his speedo. Rose got soul-water in her hair and ears, but it was all for the moment. The waves became more and more ridiculous, until finally it came. The tube was a yearly occurance, one that brough the most damned of souls up to the surface, a 40 foot wave.

For a single moment, everything was dead still. Rose and Dave looked at each other, frightened and alive, and so close to the honored dead below them. It came with a roar and a mighty rearing up of a small mountain of saltwater. Practiced, Dave and Rose got into position. In perfect harmony, they mounted the wave and then, for a measure, they were falling down along the inside, careening on death and toward death with nothing but fiberglass to save them. I took a special breed of lunatic to accomplish such a task, a breed that could find some momentary freedom from being so close to death and still breathing. Eventually they would come ashore and lay on their back and heave while the adrenaline rushed through them and they stared up at the concrete gray sky.

"Rose," Dave heaved, "are we gonna talk after you leave for college."

There were only breaths, and then, "Yes. Yes, I hope so."


End file.
